The present invention relates generally to telecommunications and, more specifically, it concerns a system permitting service selective voice communication among users who have different communication services available.
Residential telephone service allows a caller to make a call to a callee by dialing a telephone number that is associated with the callee. For example, if a telephone number “510-222-5555” belongs to John; a caller can call John by dialing “510-222-5555” using a telephone.
However, today virtually every user has multiple voice communication services available, including: cellular telephone services; Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone services (e.g., Vonage service or Skype service); and Instant Messenger (IM) based voice services (e.g., Yahoo Messenger voice service, GoogleTalk service, or Internet Gaming). Thus, there may be multiple ways to call John on his telephone.
In addition to the conventional telephone service described above, other possibilities may exist. If John subscribes to an IM based voice service with a user name “turtleneck2046”, a caller who also subscribes to the same service can call John using his user name “turtleneck2046” through a personal computer. A caller who subscribes to an IM based voice service that supports outgoing calls to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) can call John's telephone using the IM based voice service through a personal computer, a smartphone, or a PDA.
There are many ways to reach a business. For example, Honest Pizza owns multiple telephone numbers, including a toll-free telephone number, and subscribes to multiple IM based voice services. A caller can call Honest Pizza by using any of the telephone numbers or user names associated with Honest Pizza.
From another perspective, a telephone that connects to multiple voice services provides unprecedented convenience to a caller. A caller can use the telephone to make a call to a callee using any of the multiple voice services. So, the telephone can connect to: a cellular telephone service or a residential telephone service; a VoIP telephone service and a residential telephone service; multiple VoIP telephone services and multiple IM based voice services.
However, this unprecedented convenience also presents overwhelming complexity for a caller to master. When Eva uses the telephone to call John, she oftentimes does not care about which voice service is used to make the call. In another scenario, Eva's telephone connects to five voice services; and John can receive a call from only two of the voice services. For example, Eva's telephone connects to a residential telephone service, a VoIP telephone service, and three IM based voice services. John owns a cell phone and does not subscribe to the three IM based voice services. When Eva uses the telephone to call John, she will have to select the residential service or the VoIP telephone service to make the call. Choosing the wrong voice service will result in call failure.
There is therefore a need to provide a solution, such that a caller need not choose a service when calling a callee.